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General => Tech, Science, IT discussion & News => Topic started by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 18, 2015, 04:31:25 AM

Title: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 18, 2015, 04:31:25 AM
So I decided to upgrade from my 1920x1080 monitor and went for a 4K monitor. However, when I tried it, I discovered that it was well under 4000p (almost half of that, in fact). Can I report the store or company for falsely advertising a 2160p monitor as 4000p?



Oh wait! I just discovered that they now advertise the monitor horizontal resolution instead of vertical. THey wanted to make the number greater to make technology-illiterate people (most customers) think that the TV is four times the vertical resolution of a 1080P TV rather than twice.


Oh wait... in fact my new monitor isn't even 4K. It's 3.84K! False advertising!


Joking aside, seriously, why the switch? I mean, 2160p looks weird, but didn't 720p, 1080i and 1080p look weird already? Why we are suddenly switching to horizontal? Is it just because companies expects most customers to be so stupid that they'll think a 4K TV is 7110x4000, 6820x3840 or 7680x4320? :P
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: novenary on November 18, 2015, 04:35:08 AM
Presumably 4k means that there's four times the amount of pixels that 1080p has (it has double resolution horizontally and vertically).
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Yuki on November 18, 2015, 04:38:18 AM
They probably wanted to emphasize on the fact it's 4 times bigger in area (equivalent to 4 Full HD screens), so they went with the width instead of the height. They never officially went with the height anyway when HD came out, 1080p came later and I'm pretty sure we'll say 2160p as well.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 18, 2015, 05:24:35 AM
Quote from: Juju on November 18, 2015, 04:38:18 AM
They never officially went with the height anyway when HD came out, 1080p came later
Wait, what did they use before? O.O

Also yeah my issue is that it makes some people think that 4K means 4000p (or close), as in 4 times the vertical amount of pixels in full HD TV, rather than 4 times the total amount of pixels in the screen. It's kinda like if they suddenly decided that to calculate the size of an LCD monitor, they would not only include the frame around the screen, but also the monitor thickness and support base in the dimensions.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: p4nix on November 18, 2015, 09:43:31 AM
I think the more important question is why to buy high resolution screens. The majority doesn't need that pixel density in my opinion. Of course, fonts might look better, but one can live with less pixels :o
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: novenary on November 18, 2015, 10:07:56 AM
You don't know till you tried. I was sure high density was useless until I got my phone, it has a 320 dpi screen and everything looks really smooth. Also high resolution reduces the need for anti aliasing, which is a good thing.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: p4nix on November 18, 2015, 10:18:00 AM
I will not buy a new display for my computer until my current one is dead.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: novenary on November 18, 2015, 10:23:28 AM
That's fair, I myself have two monitors and want a third one though. Working with more than one monitor is great and I'd like to take further advantage of that, besides neither of my current ones is 1080p which is pretty annoying because I watch a lot of anime and sometimes movies on my computer and I'd rather play them unscaled.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: p4nix on November 18, 2015, 10:25:59 AM
The problem with multi-monitors is, that I don't have enough space at the moment, and that I wouldn't like having two different monitors :P So that would cost a lot (especially a computer which can handle that). But it definitely has some advantages.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: novenary on November 18, 2015, 10:27:00 AM
Well any computer can handle multiple monitors, it depends what you do on them. :P Also the total resolution is what actually matters, as multiple monitors are internally treated as a larger single monitor.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 26, 2015, 04:29:45 AM
It actually depends of the computer video card too. If your video card is too old and low-end and you use 4K worth of resolution, then expect some display lag, especially with fullscreen videos.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Snektron on November 27, 2015, 03:43:36 PM
My calculator has a 6K monitor: 96 * 64 = 6144 pixels
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 27, 2015, 10:14:56 PM
Ha, I bet the next marketing step will be to call smaller screens of handheld consoles like that, or use something like 2M as in 2 millions. Older French Canadians will think it stands for 2 Megs (remember in the 90's when ppl said meg instead of megabyte and MB?)
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: novenary on November 28, 2015, 04:53:05 AM
The megapixel thing is exactly that, it counts the pixels in the picture. 1080p is 2MP, 4k is 8MP. It's usually used in digital photography.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 28, 2015, 05:15:11 AM
Ah right, I didn't realize. Then they'll probably find a way to inflate the numbers even more to increase their sales once better cameras come out. :P
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: novenary on November 28, 2015, 05:18:57 AM
Not really, nowadays they make cameras far beyond 20MP, I forgot how much but it's huge.
Also note that resolution isn't everything, it's just the amount of detail you can display or capture. There are many other factors affecting quality.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 28, 2015, 05:24:32 AM
I know, I omce tried taking a picture with an iPod Touch and the quality, despite the image being high resolution, looked like someone applied a painting filter on the picture. I couldn't even read any text in it. X.x
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: rwill on December 21, 2015, 06:45:42 PM
Last post Nov 28, but I see the need to reply anyway...

For television/broadcast there is 720p ( sometimes called HD Ready ) and 1080p/i ( HD ) and 2160p ( UHD ).

For cinema there is mostly 2k and 4k with _various_ vertical resolutions and sometimes adjusted horizontal resolution.

I will not comment on the use of the term "4k" when used for consumer devices but I suggest to read the wikipedia entry for the 4k resolution. The german wikipedia entry for 2k https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_(Film) (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_(Film)) has an interesting resolution table for digital cinema as well.

PS: My password was rejected ~3 times when logging in to CW, then it worked. I did not make a mistake typing because I used copy/paste.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: ben_g on December 21, 2015, 11:08:50 PM
I think that actually 720P is HD instead of 'HD Ready', 1080p is "Full HD" and 2160p is "Ultra HD" (though more commonly called '4k', even though 'Ultra HD' sounds cooler).
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on December 30, 2015, 06:15:02 AM
Quote from: rwill on December 21, 2015, 06:45:42 PM
Last post Nov 28, but I see the need to reply anyway...

For television/broadcast there is 720p ( sometimes called HD Ready ) and 1080p/i ( HD ) and 2160p ( UHD ).

For cinema there is mostly 2k and 4k with _various_ vertical resolutions and sometimes adjusted horizontal resolution.

I will not comment on the use of the term "4k" when used for consumer devices but I suggest to read the wikipedia entry for the 4k resolution. The german wikipedia entry for 2k https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_(Film) (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_(Film)) has an interesting resolution table for digital cinema as well.

PS: My password was rejected ~3 times when logging in to CW, then it worked. I did not make a mistake typing because I used copy/paste.

I remember back when 720p TVs came out, they were advertising them as HD TVs here, while 1080p TVs were advertised as the same or as full HD. We really had to be careful when checking stores since we were often misinformed. Then there was Staples, who advertised the TI-89 Titanium as a TI-89 made of titanium.


As for the password, copy/paste doesn't work with passwords on most forums, because it pastes something different (sometimes much longer too). I think it was done to discourage people from copy/pasting when asked to enter their password twice in sign-up forms, due to the risk of mistyping it then copying the error in the second field. I could be wrong, though.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: semiprocoder on December 30, 2015, 03:44:46 PM
Well, advertising HD as 720p is technically correct according to wiki and my old camera. Then 1080p is full HD.
Also, Staples advertised ti 89 titanium's as actually made of titanium? Was it like for the features or something, because otherwise that seems like misinformation.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on January 17, 2016, 07:31:45 AM
Yeah, that Staples calculator page is so bad that it's good. I think they used an automatic translator program or the one who translated it did it literally, resulting into the fail that they now had for three years.
Title: Re: Why 4K instead of 2160p?
Post by: DarkestEx on March 06, 2016, 04:16:13 AM
Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on November 27, 2015, 03:43:36 PM
My calculator has a 6K monitor: 96 * 64 = 6144 pixels
I have a camera that has 0.0009 MP and can operate at 6400 frames / sec. I'll be using it in my CNC mill for basic object finding.